Most of us see long-term relationships as something static. And it’s hard for us to admit that relationships are always in motion. Partners will have to go through 4 key segments. What are they? And why doesn’t everyone succeed?
“Imagine that you dip your hand into water, the temperature of which is the same as your body temperature. And you freeze. At some point, you will stop feeling boundaries. Where does skin end and water begin? To feel yourself again, you need to move your hand, says Gestalt therapist Anna Bokova. — It’s the same in relationships: when we freeze, we stop feeling ourselves, each other, our own and other people’s boundaries. But it is at the border that the most interesting thing happens in a pair, there the real contact takes place. And at that moment, two people can really see their similarities and differences. They show themselves to each other for who they are, throw off their masks and stop defending themselves.
Over the long history of mankind, a stereotype of relations has developed: in order to survive, raise offspring, find food, hide from bad weather and dangers, a man and a woman must become one, “blind”. A woman could not take care of a child and get food alone.
Now this will surprise no one. Times have changed. A woman doesn’t need a man to survive. Partners do not need to merge into a single entity. Problems in modern couples begin just at the moment when the partners, who yesterday were enchanted looking into each other’s eyes, are faced with the fact that they are different, each has its own «I».
“And this is where many people can’t stand it,” explains Anna Bokova. “It’s really scary that someone else is different from you. Then you need to change something, but you don’t want to change — you need everything to be constant, “as before”. There is a great need to maintain stability and certainty. Because in our life there are so many uncertainties, everything is constantly changing. We often fail to maintain the thesis that relationships are continuous recognition of the other. This is definitely not stability and inviolability. To wait for this is to be in illusions.”
Atavism in the form of the traditional family model «We are a single and indivisible whole» is still in use
“People put on wedding rings and start playing the stereotype: money should be in a common pot, no entertainment separately, if we are apart, then they don’t like me and don’t trust me,” says Anna Bokova.
Why is it convenient for us to drive along the usual track? Someone is afraid of loneliness, someone stays for the sake of children, someone because of money, religious reasons, out of fear of breaking family traditions («In our family, everyone lived happily until old age»).
A very small number of couples remain together due to the fact that the partners mutually enrich each other. Therefore, marriage as an institution is dying today, according to Robert and Rita Resnick, family gestalt therapists (Los Angeles), who proposed a new model of relationships. In their opinion, the couple must go through four stages. But it doesn’t happen just once. The whole life of a couple is a spiral from stage to stage.
“I am often approached by couples who are stuck on one of them. Or one of the partners “slips”. Through couples therapy, they learn to move on to the next stage. And most importantly, they recognize each other’s differences and learn to see this as a true resource for development.”
First step: merge. This is the time when partners live and breathe in unison. They look alike and see themselves in others. The very period that is described in fairy tales as «they lived happily ever after.» But if fairy tales depicted real life, they would not be very funny. Because in a healthy relationship, the fabulous period — the merger — must inevitably be replaced by the next. Often it is during this period in social networks that partners put a photo of their couple on their profile picture. “As a rule, the “mimimi” stage in a healthy relationship ends by the beginning of the second year of the relationship,” says Anna Bokova.
Stage two: distance. One day, about a year later, we suddenly notice that the partner is far from being a handsome prince or a sweet princess. He doesn’t look like us. His differences are beginning to irritate.
“Often partners do not accept these differences. They think that their family, their beneficent merger, will be destroyed, — says Anna Bokova, — and they begin to fight for power. They try to get rid of differences by making the other like themselves. It is at this phase that the first conflicts arise — attempts to get rid of differences.
The family system is under stress. And often at this stage there is a collapse. And the couple sees the only way to survive it in a break and divorce. It does not occur to partners that an important and necessary stage for them is coming — distance. You need to go through it correctly, often with the help of a professional family therapist.
Partners learn to deal with each other’s differences in new ways. Every person needs distance. Because in the outside world — our hobbies, communication with others, in work, solitude — we draw new impressions that we bring to a couple. And it enriches the relationship.
“It’s equally bad when we stew in our own juice, not letting our partner get impressions outside the couple, and when we move too far away without coming back,” explains Anna Bokova.
It is then that partners often say: “We have become strangers, we have nothing in common — we go to bed at different times, we don’t spend time together at all, we have nothing to talk about, we don’t touch each other.”
At this stage, love triangles appear, resentment arises, and the partner may not be ready to resume close relationships. How to be then?
Third stage: contact. Between merger and separation, Robert and Rita Reznik propose to place two more points and consider relationships in a couple as cycles. In order for the couple to return from separation to merger in the next cycle, they need to go through contact and intimacy.
“We must accept that throughout our lives we will get to know each other, get to know each other,” says Anna Bokova. “Contact is when you are ready to tell about yourself, who you really are, and not worry how much the other will not like you.”
At this stage, we allow each other to be themselves. This is the period of presenting the differences and getting to know the differences of the other — when one states that he likes embroidery, and the other that he does not like fishing.
“If a wife does not like football, but goes there, because it is important for her husband, and in the end she endures and gets angry, this is not a contact. This is an attempt to go back into the fusion without going through the other phases. It is the desire to erase differences.»
The absence of common interests does not mean that the couple is ill and should part. Vice versa! «Oh, look how many differences we have, let’s get acquainted: I’ll tell you what I’m interested in, and you tell me what you’re interested in.» This is the contact. When we share ourselves, we talk about ourselves and what we have brought from our distance, what we want to share with others.”
Stage four: intimacy. This is not about sex. “Intimacy is about trust and security. When you can say who you are, even knowing that you can be rejected in this. You trust yourself to another person, says Anna Bokova. — And even if he says «no», this does not mean that he does not love you, that he is some kind of bad. Until the partners present themselves to each other as they are, do not share frankness in the phase of intimacy, they cannot really get close. It’s very disappointing when people at the stage of difference diverge and never allow themselves to try a different model. ”
It is important at what stage of family life partners turn to a therapist: when a couple can be helped, and when, alas, it is no longer possible. For example, when the differences are so irreconcilable that the other side is not able to accept them for reasons of their own security. This often happens if the husband has a mistress with whom he is not ready to part, or another family. The wife cannot accept this, it categorically does not suit her.
To be together means to dance a pair dance, in which there is everything — a merging in emotions, and distance, and contact, and true closeness.
“Everything is very individual. Some have one value system, some have another. And so they present them in contact, but are not ready to accept and move on to the phase of intimacy. And maybe the best thing they can do for the couple and for themselves is to leave and find another person with more suitable values, ”says Anna Bokova.
For the prevention of relationships, the expert believes, it would be good to go to couples therapy every five years to check whether we are both going where our boundaries are now, at what phase we are. And therapy can be ended when the husband or wife at breakfast says: “Coffee is disgusting!”, And at the same time, both spouses know that it is just about coffee.
“There is a ceremony in the Catholic religion when the newlyweds each go to the altar with their own candle, which is extinguished after they light one common candle,” says Anna Bokova, “Robert and Rita offer a new model when a couple lights a common candle, but at the same time continue burn and their personal candles. This is a great metaphor for harmonious relationships. After all, being together means dancing a pair dance, in which there is everything — a fusion in emotions, and distance, and contact, and true closeness.